


Cafe Soulmates: Eye Trauma Edition

by headlesshorsepossum



Series: Soulmate AU(s) [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, And Pax Doesn't Get To Use It This Round, Eye Trauma, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Polyamory, Rescue, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, The Disaster Trio Has One Braincell Among Them, Unhealthy Relationships, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:47:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25445629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headlesshorsepossum/pseuds/headlesshorsepossum
Summary: Pax makes a questionable decision, and there are Extreme Consequences To Their Physical Health
Series: Soulmate AU(s) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1830571





	Cafe Soulmates: Eye Trauma Edition

**Author's Note:**

> SO it occurred to me that with the timeline I set for Soulmate AU, Pax’s mark is a reference to the fact that they only have one eye, but the events that result in the loss of their eye (as detailed in A Vivid Memory from Memory Meme) don’t actually have any reason to occur if they meet the boys before the Bad End of their relationship with Vic. So their mark is a reference to a thing that Doesn’t Actually Occur.
> 
> So I, you know, Fixed That.
> 
> This takes place a few months after the original Cafe Soulmate AU.
> 
> (also just cause there’s a very brief reference to it here and in the last one: part of the Lore is that soulmate marks fade to gray if the person they represent dies.)
> 
> TW for: EYE TRAUMA, referenced unhealthy relationship dynamics/abusive relationship/gaslighting, gore, betrayal; mild unhealthy thought patterns; vague references to a past suicide attempt.

The objective of Pax’s trip back upstate to Vic’s lab is to get their stuff and say goodbye. And their soulmates’ guarded sympathy (Kent) and open horror (Sol) at Pax’s description of their relationship (with their boss, who is more than twice as old and three times as rich as they are) is still very fresh in their mind.

But… but it’s harder to remember in Vic’s actual presence. When they tell him they’re leaving, he takes it so well, gathers up the few things he ever let them actually leave at his house (they’ve always been his dirty little secret, that was the initial appeal of the whole thing), cups their face in his soft cold hand and tells them he’ll miss them, and it’s—suddenly it seems dumb that Sol and Kent were so worried about this, that Sol practically begged them not to come. Sol and Kent are—well, Pax loves them, obviously, and knows they want the best for them. But they’re also naïve babies who are probably—projecting their own trauma onto a perfectly safe illicit affair that Pax has under complete control.

So—because it’s in person, and Vic smiles and squeezes their hand, and they owe him after all the patience he had with them when they were young and embarrassing—when Vic says he wishes Pax could help him with one more thing, as a real goodbye, Pax doesn’t say no.

—-

Sol is pacing, and he doesn’t know how long he’s been pacing but it must be for a long time because Kent is one of the most patient people he knows and even Kent is starting to get impatient with him.

“It’s just—It’s just a bad fucking idea,” he says, as his best attempt at a defense.

“I know,” Kent says.

“I mean, Jesus, they wouldn’t even tell us this guy’s _name,_ how fucking shady is that? And they fucking _worked_ for him.”

“I _know,”_ Kent says.

“And they’re—they want us to think they’re so tough, they want us to think there’s nothing that can hurt them, but they’re _not_ that much older than we are,” he says, taking a long drag that kills his third cigarette in ten minutes.

 _“I know,”_ Kent says, appearing suddenly in front of Sol and distracting him with a warm hand on his shoulder and then snatching the cigarette out of his mouth. “Sol,” Kent says, and searches Sol’s face with his big blue eyes, and then sighs. “Will you sit down, please? You’re making me dizzy.” And Kent steps back out of his space, taking Sol’s cigarette with him, which isn’t fair at all. Sol plops down on his shitty couch, running a hand roughly through his hair.

Kent stubs the cigarette carefully out on an ashtray Karine made in tenth grade art class—one of the few things Sol took with him when he left home, and probably the dumbest of them—and Sol literally isn’t even trying to be an asshole when he immediately pulls another one out of his pocket and lights it. He just needs something to do with his hands and his mouth.

Kent turns back, sees the lit cigarette in Sol’s mouth, draws back like an angry mother (Sol imagines, anyway; he doesn’t actually remember having one of those). Sol blinks at him. “What?” he says blankly around the cigarette.

“Jesus Christ, Sol,” Kent snaps, stomping forward, and this time he doesn’t bother with the cigarette dangling from Sol’s surprised parted lips, he dives straight for the pocket of Sol’s hoodie instead. “Give me your fucking lighter,” he snaps.

“What? No!” Sol shoves Kent’s hand away and Kent obligingly plants his knee next to Sol’s hip and climbs halfway in Sol’s lap, which is more than enough incentive for Sol not to give in easily. He leans back, more to keep from burning Kent with the end of his cigarette than anything else, and grabs the hand Kent is using to reach for his pocket to twine their fingers together and trap Kent’s hand against his chest. Kent uses his other hand to grab the lit cigarette and toss it behind him—it lands on the glass-top coffee table, so that should be fine—and his fingertips brush Sol’s lips, and then he twists that arm between them to reach for Sol’s pocket, grabbing hold of Sol’s lighter and darting his hand behind his back. Sol leans into him to reach for it, and Kent twists until Sol’s momentum tips him over backwards onto the couch, trapping his hand and Sol’s lighter underneath him, and Sol laughs, grateful for the transparent effort at a distraction, and swings his leg across Kent’s hips, happy enough to wrestle if that’s what Kent—

They both feel it at the same time.

The explosion of phantom pain in the whole right hemisphere of Sol’s face punches all the air out of him, his head dropping onto Kent’s chest, and he feels Kent gasp under him, hit with the same force—the pain is sharp, and burning, and _not theirs._

Sol can’t move because horror has pulled all his muscles tight and he can’t relax them enough even to lift his head. Kent is equally still underneath him.

 _“Oh no,”_ Kent says, his voice all breath.

“Where are they,” Sol whispers, and he feels Kent force in a breath underneath him, hopes to god he’s getting something—Kent can feel shit Sol can’t even tell is there, and—and Pax is the best with directions, goddammit, but Sol will make it work, between the two of them they can—they can—

Kent sits up, pushing Sol off with one hand, gentle because he’s too distracted to use his full strength. His other hand is pressed hard over his right eye.

“They’re—they—fuck,” Kent croaks, holding a fistful of Sol’s hoodie like he needs it to stay upright. “I can’t—I can’t _think,_ Sol, _they’re hurt,”_ Kent says, his voice rising in growing panic.

“Can you tell what’s wrong?” Sol asks him urgently, reaching for Kent’s shoulder to better see his face, and because he knows Kent panics less when you hold him tightly—and Kent’s got the best sense of the three of them, his feelings are more specific. Sol’s is already fading to nothing but a dull ache in his head, he knows it’s physical pain but beyond that it could be anything.

Kent lets Sol turn him, though the eye he isn’t covering is unfocused and he isn’t seeing Sol at all. “It’s _bad,”_ Kent whispers, his voice soft and horrified. “Is this what it was like when you—?”

“Yes,” Sol says immediately, but Kent is staring at him now instead of through him, his eye widening in alarm, and while Sol watches Kent drops the hand he’s had pressed against his face and reaches out toward Sol and—pushes the collar of Sol’s hoodie open, his fingers brushing lightly where their shared mark sits above the collar of his undershirt—the mark they’ve both had since birth, _Pax’s_ mark.

It’s a stylized image of an eye, with a sharp slash down the middle of it.

“Phone,” Kent says, and his eyes dart back up to Sol’s face, all trace of panic gone, replaced with a firm mouth and blazing eyes; Sol’s heart seizes painfully in his chest because it’s a very Pax expression. “Ping their phone. Even if they don’t have it with them it’s a start.” And then he’s on his feet, shrugging into the coat he’s been borrowing from Sol. “I’m gonna start asking the neighbors if one of them will let us use their car.”

“You _what?”_ Sol says, scrambling to his feet. He’s lived in this apartment for three years, during which time he’s cultivated what he considers a very healthy don’t-tell-the-landlord-about-the-extra-people-living-in-my-apartment-and-I-won’t-tell-him-about-the-impenetrable-weed-fog-from-yours-Dave-from-317 relationship. He certainly doesn’t know any of them well enough to say “hey, yeah, sorry, another soulmate bleeding to death, can I _borrow your car.”_

“They like me. I watch _General Hospital_ with Miriam in 309 when you’re at work. _Ping their phone.”_

And Kent whirls out of Sol’s apartment like he _isn’t_ hiding from the cops. “What the fuck,” Sol mutters to himself.

Then he sees where the icon for Pax’s phone is. His second “what the fuck” is a lot louder.

—-

Pax’s arm is shaking badly from the effort of pressing it against their eye, trying to stop the blood, and it still isn’t working, is still gushing between their fingers and running down their face. They barely feel the second hit, when the knife slides between their ribs, and then they dive for the gun, falling over and sliding in their own blood, and spin around, not trying to get up, and pull the trigger three times.

The dry click of the empty chamber is the loudest sound they’ve ever heard.

The security guard pulled to a stop when they pointed the gun, and now he grins and takes a step closer, so Pax whips the gun end over end at his head as hard as they can, and then they follow it, throwing themself at the arm holding the knife. They gun hits the guard’s forehead, hard, rocking him back, and Pax gets a good (blood-slick) grip on his arm, but they have to take their hand off their eye in the interest of getting ahold of the knife, and now the blood is fairly pouring down their face and hot and sticky down their neck and soaking into the collar of their shirt. The guard’s arm swings behind him with the force of their momentum and when he doesn’t immediately drop the knife they think fuck it and turn their head, open their mouth, and sink their teeth into his bicep, hard. The guard howls and his hand loosens around the knife enough that Pax can wrap their bloody fingers around the handle, they’re pulling it from his hand with a surge of desperate triumph and then the guard makes a fist with his other arm and slams it full force against Pax’s ruined right eye.

Pax _screams._ (A hundred miles away, Sol almost swerves off the road.)

They don’t lose their hold of the knife, but suddenly they’re on their back and the guard is standing above them, panting, clutching his arm below the shoulder where Pax bit him. His knuckles are dripping with Pax’s blood.

The door of the lab they’ve been fighting over slides open and Vic Michaelis is standing in the doorway. Pax feels the eye they still have well up immediately even though Vic isn’t a fighter, because Vic is a _grown up_ and he’ll know what to do.

Vic looks at them on the floor, looks at the gun–the gun Vic gave them, which was empty, why would–-that’s a big mistake to make if he knew there was security here, how could he even have–-

“You idiot,” Vic says. “What the fuck is this?” He stomps into the room, headed straight for the guard, who—isn’t attacking. “What part of ‘no serioius damage’ was unclear to you?”

Pax stares up at Vic. Blood is pouring down their face but they can’t move, they are frozen completely solid.

“Oh, fuck you, man,” the guard says, annoyed. “Asshole fucking _bit_ me. You didn’t pay me to catch a fucking _weasel.”_

This—isn’t happening. It isn’t—they—no. Pax scoots back, away from Vic and the guard, who are now standing next to each other, and not fighting, and both looking down at where they are sprawled on the floor. Vic’s face is—irritated, harried, and nothing deeper than that.

“Ugh,” Vic says, wrinkling his nose down at Pax. “Christ. What a mess.”

Pax stares at Vic. Thinks of his stillness while he listened to them tell him they were leaving and not coming back. Thinks of the way his face went blank before he smiled and told them he was happy. Thinks of the things in his lab, and how Pax decided years ago to pretend they didn’t know, and how they told themselves it was because they loved him, and how really it was because they were afraid.

Vic turns to the guard, maybe to give him instructions. The guard glares at him. Neither of them are looking at Pax, and the blood-covered knife is still in their hand.

There’s a part of them—the part made of wounded pride and hurt feelings, that thinks being known as a gullible child is worse than being dead—that would like to throw themselves at Vic Michaelis, bowl him over, stay until one of them is dead and either way they aren’t stuck as some dumbass easy-to-fuck-over sugar baby, and six months ago when there was nothing to lose except their pride they would have listened.

But they’ve got more to lose, now, and they can’t hurt themselves without also hurting other, better, more important people.

They throw the knife instead.

It spins end over end and buries itself in Vic’s sternum. It’s not a great wound, not lethal or even that inconvenient, probably, but it does buy them enough time to shoot to their feet and sprint for the door of the lab.

With their back turned they don’t know who fires the shot that clips their shoulder on the way out. But they’re pretty sure the guard didn’t have a gun.

In a different world, when Pax Field makes it out of the lab and into the surrounding woods and collapses against a tree to pant and press their hand over their eye and sob, as quietly as they can, sinking to the forest floor and shaking with the force of it, they are utterly, entirely alone. They cry for twenty minutes at the most and then they drag themselves up and stumble four miles to a payphone and call 911. It is the most alone they ever feel in a life characterized, at least at the start, entirely by loneliness.

In this world love is written across their chest and around their wrists in bold colors, and they curl up at the base of the tree and press their forehead into their knees and their hand over their ruined eye and think, as hard and as loud as they can, _come find me. Come find me. Come find me._

—

The last thirty miles of the drive upstate hurtle by in tense silence. Sol grips the wheel at perfect ten-and-two with white knuckles; Kent doesn’t have a wheel to grip so he leans forward with his hands against the dashboard instead. The car belongs to Dave from 317, whose soulmark is on the back of his knee, gray as smoke, and who didn’t even wait for Kent to finish his plea before he handed the keys over.

There will be time for Sol to rethink his impressions of his neighbors later, maybe. Like there will be time to wonder what the fuck Pax’s phone is doing at his father’s house. Sometime after they get there and he stops his soulmate from dying, _again._

When they’re still more than ten miles away from the house where Sol grew up, where Pax’s fucking sugar daddy apparently lives, which is math Sol is desperately keeping his brain from doing because there will be plenty of time to throw up after Pax _isn’t dying,_ Kent suddenly lurches forward, hand shooting out to grip Sol’s shoulder almost painfully, and yells _“Wait!”_

Sol slams on the brakes without even consciously deciding to, and stares at Kent, almost panting.

“Turn here,” Kent says, indicating a tiny little turnoff half hidden in overgrown bushes and weeds.

“What?” Sol says, squinting into the darkness. “There’s nothing here, their phone—”

“It’s this way,” Kent says, leaning forward in his seat, eyes fixed on the darkness of that little trail like he can see into it. His hand is still on Sol’s shoulder, though he isn’t squeezing anymore; it seems more like he’s forgotten it’s there.

“Fuck,” Sol says, “fine, okay,” and he turns off the road, and then feels a hot line of pain rip through the top of Pax’s shoulder; the car fishtails badly and he only just manages to hit the brake again before it goes plows into a line of trees.

Sol hunches over the wheel, gasping. Kent’s hand is in a fist on Sol’s shoulder again, holding a handful of Sol’s hoodie like it’s a lifeline.

“Fucking _drive,”_ Kent wails, and Sol wrestles the car back onto the little half-overgrown road and hits the gas hard.

Halfway down the road Kent flaps his hand, hitting Sol’s shoulder repeatedly like a little kid trying to get their parents’ attention. _“Stop the car stop the car stop the car—”_

And when Sol does Kent throws his door open almost before they’ve come to a stop and throws himself out into the dark woods.

 _“Fuck!”_ Sol yells, and stumbles out after him.

The moon is out, and this far from the city the stars are bright on Kent’s hair, and Sol thinks if Kent weren’t blonde he’d have lost him a dozen times over by now. The trees fly by; Kent’s hurtles through them at a dead sprint and Sol has to push himself hard to keep up, with no idea where there going, just trusting that Kent knows, and trusting Pax to hold together till they get there, and trusting himself to be any help at all when they do. Branches scratch at his face and grab at his jeans and his hoodie and he barely feels them at all, all his focus on the uneven ground under his feet and the blonde head bobbing along in front of him.

Kent stops so abruptly that Sol has to grab a passing tree to keep from tumbling right into him, and then he makes a horrible sound—a sharp cry that sounds like it’s been torn out of him—and stumbles forward again, falling to his knees in front of a dark shape that Sol can’t really see in the darkness.

Then the sky clears even more or Sol’s eyes adjust or soul magic intervenes because he can see that the shape is a person with a mess of pink hair, curled up at the base of a tree with their knees drawn up to their chest and their head bowed.

Then they look up and Sol draws back so fast he slips on the muddy ground and lands hard on his ass.

 _“Shit,”_ Kent says, his hands hovering over Pax’s blood-matted hair, the gory ruin of the right half of their face, their torn-open shoulder, like he wants to pull them close but is afraid to touch them. Sol scrambles towards them on his hands and knees to see better—their face is the hardest to look away from, the hand pressed over their eye is more red than brown, the blood running in half-dried rivulets down their arm; their black turtleneck is stiff and shiny with it.

Pax looks at them, _sees_ them, incredibly; raises the hand not pressed to their face to grab a fistful of Kent’s shirt, and gurgles, “You came,” in a terrible wet voice.

Kent turns back to Sol, his face set and determined again. “We’ve got to get them to the car.”

Sol stares at him, feeling like a kid, feeling scared stupid. Then he muscles the fear down, swallows it and doesn’t let himself gag, squares his shoulders. “You can’t lift for shit,” he says, scooting closer. “I’ve got them.”

Pax hears him say it, and seems to sigh out all the tension that’s been keeping them upright, and immediately sags sideways; Sol catches them, exchanges a frightened look with Kent, and gathers them in, more carefully than he’s ever done anything. Pax is taller than he is, there’s no non-awkward way to do it, and he ends up lifting them onto his hip like a huge blood-covered baby, their long muscly legs wrapped around his waist, and Pax clings to him tightly, crossing their feet together behind his back and using the hand that isn’t holding their eye in their head to grab onto the back of Sol’s shirt and hold on, two-hundred pounds of dense muscle; and their shoulder-wound is easy to forget about in comparison to their face but Sol can immediately feel blood from it soaking into his hoodie and the adrenaline keeps him going, while Kent clears the way in front of him at a tense jog, warning him of roots he can’t see and sweeping branches out of his way.

They’ll have to pay Dave to get his car cleaned, Sol thinks, when he lowers Pax into the backseat. Kent climbs in with them and Pax leans against him, and then huffs out a shaky breath and climbs over into his lap, burying their face in his shoulder. Kent goes tense as a wire—presumably at the terrifying volume of tacky half-dry blood involved—and then visibly makes himself relax, digs in his pocket and tosses his phone towards where Sol is hovering just outside the car.

“Search for the nearest hospital,” he says tersely, and Sol is halfway through typing it in when Pax’s voice drifts outs, muffled by Kent’s shirt.

“…can’t go… hospital,” they mutter.

Sol stares at them. “You _what?”_ he snaps.

Pax lifts their head to frown at Kent. Their hand is still pressed over their eye; their nose and Kent’s are almost touching. “We fucking. _Kidnapped_ you. They’ll catch you. We can’t go to a hospital.”

Kent stares at Pax, somewhere between horrified and furious. “You— _who cares?_ Pax, you’re fucking _bleeding to death!” ___

__Pax frowns. It’s a small car and there really isn’t room for them to sit up while they’re on Kent’s lap; they lean back against the front seatback, their knees braced on either side of Kent’s thighs. “So were you,” they say nonsensically, sounding almost defensive._ _

__Sol can just barely see Kent’s embarrassed flush in the moonlight, and he turns his head away, so he’s not looking at Sol or Pax. “Yeah, and you made me _go to the hospital,”_ he snaps._ _

__Pax plucks at Kent’s shirt, the visible less-bloody half of their face softening, until Kent looks back at them._ _

__“They’ll _catch_ you,” Pax says softly, their visible eye big and sad while the other side of their face is utterly covered in blood._ _

__Kent stares at them, still with that defensive-furious-alarmed look on his face._ _

__“Clinic,” Sol says, almost to himself, and then grabs Kent’s sleeve in one hand and Pax’s in the other so they both turn to look at him, Pax rather unsteadily. “We passed a clinic on the way here.”_ _

__Kent’s frown deepens. “A local clinic won’t have the resources for—”_ _

__“And in the middle of the night a local clinic’ll have a much smaller staff for us to threaten or bribe if that’s what we have to do,” Sol says, trying to sound absolutely certain. He looks at Pax, who’s breathing hard but now almost smiling at him, and then at Kent, who very much isn’t._ _

__“There’s still three of us,” Sol says to him, and Kent blinks, hard, like he wants to drop his gaze but can’t. “They’re not taking you away from me any more than they’re taking Pax.”_ _

__Pax sags sideways, halfway out of the car, until Sol catches them, which was apparently their intention; they bonk their head lightly against his shoulder. “Good. Good boy, Sol. Thanks.”_ _

__Sol shakes his head, loving them so much his stomach hurts, and pushes them back upright. “Okay, idiot. Then when we get you sewn back together you can explain why you didn’t tell me you were _fucking my dad.”__ _

__“What,” says Kent. Pax sighs, and leans forward to hide their face in Kent’s shoulder again._ _

__“Your dad’s an asshole,” they say, which is the opposite of the denial Sol was hoping for._ _

__But there will be time to unpack _that_ horrible mess later. Plenty of time, because none of them are going to die._ _

__Sol climbs into the front seat of the borrowed car and guns the engine. He’s pretty sure he can remember the way back to the clinic whose sign they passed on the way here. And after that he’s pretty sure he can make them save Pax whether they want to or not. That’s about as far into the future as Sol can even try to see. But there’s still three of them, and really he doesn’t need anything more than that._ _


End file.
